The Tanner Series - Books 1-11: Tanner - The hit man with a heart

by Remington Kane

  DAYS LATER

  Inside Johnny R’s strip club, the stage was quiet because the hour was early, but a meeting was taking place in Johnny’s office.

  Present were Johnny, Joe Pullo, and Sophia Verona. Johnny had asked Sophia there to give her the sad news.

  “It was my father, not Tanner?”

  Johnny nodded solemnly. “Yeah honey, Jackie must have been out to kill Gruber as payback for killing your brother, and he got some too… but died for it.”

  Pullo shook his head. “Tanner was smart, everyone thought he was dead, so why not stay that way? Son of a bitch.”

  Johnny held up a hand with his index finger extended. “This stays in this room. No one else needs to know that bastard is still out there, and if we don’t bother him, he won’t bother us, which is fine by me. The man is a wrecking ball and we have enough damage to fix. The Conglomerate is on life support and it’s a goddamn miracle we were able to hide the slaughter that Richards caused.”

  “How’s that work?” Sophia said. “I mean, some of the men who died are big names in business, they can’t just disappear.”

  “Accidents,” Pullo said. “Lots of accidents, and it will look odd, so many at once, but it will cover things up here and in Europe.”

  “Like you did with Richards, making it look like his car went into the Hudson River?”

  “Yeah, and the homicide cops might sniff around, but since no body was recovered, it will be classified as an accident and he’ll be listed as Missing, Presumed Dead.”

  Johnny rubbed his chin and looked over at Sophia.

  “Before your father died, did he get in a fight? Something with a knife maybe?”

  “No, not that I know of, why?”

  “Gino Tonti stabbed Tanner in the left leg a day before Gruber died. When I checked the body I thought was Tanner’s, there was a wound on the left leg, a knife wound, or at least it looked like one.”

  Sophia’s eyes grew wide with comprehension and she lowered her head to hide a grin, as she realized why Romeo was so secretive.

  “Lots of wounds look like knife wounds,” Sophia said. “Even a knitting needle might have made the mark.”

  Johnny stood, and the others followed.

  Both Johnny and Pullo kissed Sophia on the cheek, and she left the office with a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

  Pullo gestured toward a handwritten letter on Johnny’s desk.

  “Is that from Mario?”

  “Yeah, like I told you, he took the blame for everything and got his daughter off the hook. It’s a damn shame that he did what he did, but he was a stand-up guy until the end.”

  They walked out into the club, nodded to Carl, who was restocking the glass shelves behind the bar, and walked outside.

  “Can I give you a lift, Joe?”

  Johnny pointed toward the new limo, where his new drivers awaited instruction.

  Merle and Earl, both dressed in black suits and wearing chauffeur caps, looked busy as they used rags to polish the car.

  Pullo threw his chin toward the boys. “What about the money they were paid as a reward for killing Tanner?”

  “That bounty came from Richards’ pockets, but we were to pay him back. Now that he’s dead, it didn’t cost us a cent, so what the hell, let them keep it. They probably blew it all by now anyway.”

  “I know you need a new driver, but why both of them?”

  “They’re a matched set and it’s about the only thing they’re good for.”

  Pullo smiled. “They’re okay, and yeah, I will take a lift. I was going to drop in and see how Mario’s daughter is doing.”

  Johnny sighed. “I’ll go with you.”

  Merle and Earl leapt into action and soon the limo was on its way through the bustling city streets.

  “Where do you think Tanner has gone to?” Johnny asked.

  Before answering, Pullo thought of Laurel, and remembered her telling him that she loved Tanner.

  “I don’t know where he is, but I sure as hell hope he stays there.”

  Johnny had told Sara the true story of Richards’ death so that she might have peace, and she learned that the man she sought, Al Trent, had died as well, under mysterious circumstances in rural Pennsylvania.

  Johnny hadn’t told her that Tanner was still alive, for fear that she would go on a quest to find Tanner and kill him. He didn’t care if Tanner lived or died, but he wanted to be with Sara and not share her with an obsession, or risk losing her at Tanner’s hands.

  Sara was in her living room, gazing out at the sky that lay beyond her balcony doors. She had been reading the morning paper but became lost in thought.

  Richards was dead, Tanner was dead, and there was no longer anyone for her to pursue in her quest to avenge Brian Ames.

  She had a new lover now, Johnny Rossetti, and a new future to create. Still, she felt restless, somehow empty. She wondered if she had subsisted on hate for so long that she’d forgotten how to live, and that life could offer more.

  She had been spending time at Street View and enjoyed the investigative work of a reporter. She had learned much about Al Trent in the short time she had been searching for him and found his death a puzzle.

  Sara tossed the newspaper account of Trent’s death aside and rose to get dressed. Life awaited, and she wanted to see what came next.

  FOUR HOURS LATER

  Tanner was saying goodbye to Tim and Madison as they prepared to leave the farm.

  Madison still wore a wide bandage on her forehead to cover the scrape she’d received when she hit her head against the tree, while Tim was wearing a walking boot for his ankle, which had suffered a grade-1 sprain when he tripped.

  They were all out on the front porch, and Madison was trying to get the dog to come to her, but the shy hound kept her distance, despite wagging her tail.

  “She saved our lives by barking,” Tim said.

  Madison frowned. “I’m worried about her, who will feed her now that we’re all leaving?”

  “She’ll feed herself,” Tanner said. “I saw her tearing into a possum this morning while I was out running.”

  Tanner’s hair was dark again and the tattoos removed. Romeo was no more.

  With the files decoded, Tanner could return to Manhattan and use the information as a bargaining chip.

  However, he had decided against it, at least for the time being, and was looking forward to moving on. He needed to go somewhere, somewhere where thoughts of Laurel Ivy didn’t invade his mind. If he never saw her again, he felt he would forget her in time. At least, he hoped so.

  Ironically, now that Tim had the leverage to stop the attempts on his life, the man who wanted him dead was gone. The funds he had stolen had come from the electronic coffers of one of Frank Richards’ companies, and with Richards dead and the rest of the Conglomerate in shambles, it was likely that no one would come looking for Tim again.

  Tim had also entered their system and erased all traces of his crime. However, Johnny Rossetti knew of him, so Tim would make certain that the mob understood he could hurt them if they attempted retribution.

  Still, Tim and Madison were free to live without fear for the first time since meeting, and like Tanner, they would start anew.

  The rain remained and had been falling for days, as the storm system seemed to hover above the region. There were trees down all over the area, as the ground grew too soft to contain their roots. The lawn in front of the farmhouse had begun to resemble a rice paddy.

  Tim gave Tanner’s hand a firm shake, while Madison kissed him on the cheek, before locking eyes with him and nodding.

  Tanner understood the meaning behind the nod. It was a sign of both understanding and forgiveness for his having killed her father.

  Any trace of love and affection that Madison had felt toward Frank Richards had left her when she realized her father had sent people to murder her. Madison didn’t blame Tanner in the slightest for what he had done.

  The young couple dro
ve off to start a new life, as thunder serenaded them, and lightning lit their way.

  Tanner was leaving as well and had packed his things into a pickup truck.

  The farm was up for sale again under an alias, and given its history, it might be years before Tim sold it. Tanner walked about the farmhouse for the final time, while making sure that nothing had been left or forgotten.

  He had just opened the front door to leave when the sound began, more tone than beep, and coming from somewhere within the house.

  His weapons were packed away in the pickup truck, but of course, Tanner was armed. He carried a small gun, a Kimber Solo in a pocket holster, but he refrained from taking it out, as the noise wasn’t ominous, just odd.

  He found the source of the noise. It was a phone. Al Trent’s phone. It had flown from Trent’s hand and fallen behind the sofa after Tim had shot him.

  Footsteps, soft, furtive, followed by a female voice. When Tanner turned toward the doorway, he found Sara Blake standing there.

  FOUR HOURS EARLIER

  Sara tossed the newspaper account of Trent’s death aside and rose to get dressed for a new day. Life awaited, and she wanted to see what came next.

  Her phone rang.

  “Hello, Duke, what’s up?”

  “I’ve got something new on Al Trent that I thought you might like to know.”

  “What could be new? The man is dead.”

  “True, but you know I like to be thorough, so I obtained a copy of Trent’s belongings and discovered that his phone wasn’t among his personal effects when he died.”

  Sara sat on the arm of her sofa. “That is interesting. Who knows what could be on that phone.”

  “That was my thinking. You might also be interested to know that the other man found inside that overturned van was Gary Crasta. Crasta worked as a bodyguard for one Frank Richards. Maybe Richards is the reason the two of them were in Pennsylvania. I think they may have been setting up a place for Richards to go, you know, after he faked his death with a phony car crash.”

  Sara recalled what Johnny had told her. That a man named Romeo had killed Richards and that Johnny had disposed of the body and covered up the killing.

  She nibbled at her bottom lip, as she pondered whether she could trust Johnny Rossetti. Was Richards dead, as Johnny claimed, or had he helped the man to fake his death and hide, and if so, why?

  “Sara?”

  “I’m here.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to find that phone. I think you’re right about it possibly containing information I could use, and if Richards is still alive, the phone may have been left at his location.”

  “I know a guy who could find it by hacking into one of those ‘Find My Phone’ services, but there’s no guarantee that Trent had that option on his phone, or that the phone is even still on, but it might be worth a try.”

  It was, and four hours later, Sara found herself on Tim’s farm.

  She turned into the driveway with plans to park a short way in, so that she could walk the rest of the way and not reveal her presence.

  When she made the turn into the driveway, a car driving behind her slowed, and for a moment, she thought it might be the homeowner returning. She cursed her timing, but the man at the wheel just drove on.

  Sara locked her car and walked along the driveway while watching every step she took. Although the driveway had a gravel surface, the soil beneath it had turned to mud and made walking treacherous, as the stones beneath her feet shifted.

  Meanwhile, the storm clouds thundered overhead, and the only thing louder was the incessant beating of the rain.

  There was a pickup truck in front of the home, but she saw no lights on inside. Sara shifted her umbrella so that she could hold it in the crook of her arm and took out her tablet once more. She checked the location of Al Trent’s phone by using the aerial map displayed on the App that tracked it.

  Trent’s phone was definitely inside the farmhouse. She activated the function that would make the phone emit a loud tone, thus, making its exact location easy to find.

  Sara was ten feet from the porch when the door opened halfway.

  She approached, thinking that someone would come out, but then she heard the sound of the tone, very faint from her position, but audible. She realized that whoever had opened the door must have gone to investigate the sound.

  Maybe that someone is Frank Richards?

  Sara went up the steps, peeked inside, and the sound grew clearer. As a precaution, she unsnapped her purse so that she had easy access to her gun. After laying the umbrella down, she crept into the home.

  A man, not Richards, yet… somehow familiar, even from behind, and he was holding Al Trent’s phone in his hand.

  “Excuse me? I didn’t mean to walk in on you, but the door was—oh my God… Tanner?”

  Tanner blinked in surprise, dropped the phone, and went for his gun, even as Sara’s hand disappeared into her purse.

  They fired at the same instant.

  One of them missed.

  The other did not.

  And death came to Forgotten Farm.

  BOOK 4

  THE FIRST ONE TO DIE LOSES - A Tanner Novel - Book 4

  While a storm rages, Tanner faces off with Sara Blake in the small town of Ridge Creek, and neither one will quit until the other is dead.

  156

  The Greater Of Two Evils

  Tanner shook off his surprise at seeing Sara Blake at the farm and went for his gun.

  He cleared the small pistol from his pocket in a smooth motion, while simultaneously thumbing off the safety. As he was doing this, he turned his body sideways to present a smaller target.

  The gun was lined up with the center of Sara’s forehead when Tanner became aware of the hulking figure coming up behind her and aiming a shotgun his way.

  He made an instant adjustment in the angle of his shot and placed a round into the big man’s chest. He was prepared to send his second shot at Sara, but was unable to, because when she returned fire, her shot had smashed into the front of his weapon and sent it flying from his hand.

  That’s when the big man collapsed onto Sara. The weight of his corpse drove her to the floor and trapped her legs beneath his bulk. Tanner’s shot had caught the man in the heart and killed him instantly.

  Sara, having been unaware that the man was even there, cried out in shock before angling her gun over her shoulder and firing off a second round.

  The bullet entered the body beneath the left shoulder blade, but then Sara saw the man’s empty eyes and knew that he was already dead.

  She brought the gun back around to fire at Tanner and just caught a glimpse of him as he sped down a hallway headed for the rear of the house. She then spotted his gun, which was lying on the floor six feet away.

  Her shot had rendered Tanner’s weapon useless. Her bullet had hit the side of the barrel and knocked it askew, damaging the slide to such an extent that even the recoil spring could be glimpsed.

  That meant that Tanner was unarmed and an easy kill, but when Sara tried to rise and go in pursuit, she realized her legs were trapped beneath the dead man’s bulk.

  “Damn it!”

  And as she struggled to free herself, she heard someone outside shout. That was followed by the sound of footsteps coming up the porch, as the rain continued to pour down in waves, and Tanner put distance between them.

  When Tanner and Sara fired their weapons, outside the farmhouse Tyler Gray and Sherry Weston had looked at each other in dismay.

  Tyler was a rawboned man who stood well over six feet tall and had stark cheekbones, along with an eyebrow ridge prominent enough to keep the rain out of his eyes.

  Sherry was his lover, as well as his partner. She had dark hair and dark eyes, along with a wide mouth that was set in a permanent frown. Her body caused men to stare in desire and, at twenty-five, she was nine years younger than Tyler, and the more ruthless of the two. That was saying something, given
Tyler’s propensity toward violence.

  The two of them had been standing beneath an evergreen tree, while Tyler’s younger brother, Randall, went to check out the house.

  Just minutes earlier, they had been headed to the farmhouse when they saw Sara park in the driveway. After driving past and hanging a U-turn, they coasted their car to a stop behind Sara’s.

  Randall had been driving while Tyler and Sherry were in the back seat with the bags of money they’d stolen from a bank, in the nearby town of Ciderville.

  Sherry’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I thought the place was supposed to be abandoned?”

  “It is, or it was, the damn place is called Forgotten Farm,” Tyler said.

  “Someone remembers it, or that woman wouldn’t be here.”

  Randall tossed his chin in the direction of Sara’s car. He was a huge man, as tall as Tyler, but bulky and not nearly as bright as his older brother.

  “Why do you think she parked so far from the house?”

  “Maybe it’s too muddy up ahead, and that is a nice car,” Tyler said.

  Randall had grabbed his shotgun from the seat beside him and opened his door.

  “I’ll go check it out, Tyler.”

  “All right, but don’t let the bitch see you until she opens the door, then find out how many are in the house. If it looks good, come get us and we’ll take it over and have a place to hide until things calm down.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Randall took off at a trot, having no fear that Sara would hear his approach above the sound of the deluge that was pouring from the sky.

  As Sara had stopped to check something on the computer tablet she held, Randall had been less than a dozen steps behind her, and when she continued onward, he followed in her wake.

  When the front door opened, Randall raised the shotgun, thinking that someone was coming out to greet the woman, but the door just stayed open partway. Sara went up the steps, while Randall stayed on the ground, standing behind the porch’s railing.